The present invention relates to armor for wires, cables, hoses, pipes, tubing, fibers, and the like.
It is often necessary or desirable to protect tubular objects or conduits such as hoses, cables, and the like from damage which can occur from any of a variety of causes, such as ballistic impacts from projectiles or fragments, while not substantially reducing their flexibility. Accordingly, many types of flexible jacketing or armoring have been developed.
U.S. Pat. No. 840,536 to Weir discloses a flexible armor for hose and piping that includes a plurality of telescoping rings or collars preferably in the form of hollow truncated cones having their ends overlapping and interlocking. For example, the larger end of a collar may be bent to produce an annular bead which engages an annular groove formed in the smaller end of an adjacent collar. Similar armors of the interlocking, shaped-end collar variety are also disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 1,822,624 to Hoeftmann and U.S. Pat. No. 4,396,797 to Sakuragi et al.
A variation of that type of armoring is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,813,477 to Fischer in which each of a plurality of pipe sections has an enlarged end portion for receiving the opposite end of an adjacent pipe which has a circumferentially projecting flange. The flange is loosely retained in a channel formed by the enlarged end portion and a ring threaded thereto that may be spot-welded to prevent the ring's loosening. In addition, the first and last pipe section may be connected to an anchoring point. A similar arrangement of interlocking sections using threaded rings is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 995,453 to Greenfield.
The above-described devices suffer from significant disadvantages, including difficulty of assembly, insufficiency of protection and flexibility, excess of parts, etc.